Political History and Governance

Historical background (with historical milestones)

San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers are the earliest inhabitants of the area that is now Zimbabwe. The San were later displaced and absorbed by the farming and cattle-herding Bantu-speaking groups, including the present-day Shona, migrating from the north at the end of the Second century. By the 1820s, the Nguni-speaking Ndebeles from modern day KwaZulu Natal (South Africa) under the leadership of Mzilikazi established themselves in the south-western part of the country, absorbing into their state some Venda, Kalanga and Shona-speaking groups. In 1890, Cecil Rhodes` British South Africa Company (BSA Co.) occupied the country and founded the colony of Rhodesia (Beach, 1994; Rasmussen, 1978).

The imposition of colonial rule was fiercely resisted by the locals, starting with the 1893 Anglo-Ndebele war of resistance fought by the Ndebele under King Lobengula, which resulted in defeat and the destruction of the Ndebele state. Both the Ndebele and Shona took up arms against the white settlers in what has come to be known as the First Chimurenga between 1896-7, but were also defeated. After the two successive defeats of the 1890s, organized black resistance to white supremacy did not resume until the 1920s, when black protest organizations were formed in the emerging towns of Bulawayo and Salisbury. However, radical active resistance only started in the 1940s with the rise of black labour militancy. Among the leading organizations of this period were the Reformed Industrial and Commercial Union (RICU) led by the veteran trade unionist Charles Mzingeli, which dominated African politics in Salisbury. The other prominent leaders of this struggle for better lives for blacks and independence led by the unions were Benjamin Burombo, Masotsha Ndlovu, Stanley Culverwell, Bradford Mnyanda, Aaron Jacha and Joshua Nkomo (Ranger, 1970; Raftopoulos & Yoshikuni, 1999).

By the late 1950s, mass nationalism was emerging, and along with it a new generation of radical and fiery leaders such as Charles Chikerema and George Nyandoro of the City Youth League (1955-1957), who later joined hands with their unionists counterparts in September 1957 to form the first country-wide mass nationalist movement – the rejuvenated Southern Rhodesia African Nationalist Congress (SRANC) which was led by Joshua Nkomo. Disturbed by its capacity to mobilize widespread support in both urban and rural areas, the Rhodesian government banned the SRANC at the beginning of 1959 and arrested most of its members. However, hardly a year after its banning, leaders of the SRANC teamed up with various members of the African intellectual elite, who included Herbert Chitepo (the first black lawyer in Rhodesia), Robert Mugabe and Ndabaningi Sithole (both graduate teachers), to form the National Democratic Party in January 1960 (Shamuyarira, 1965; Raftopoulos, 1995; Mlambo,1972).

By the early 1960s, the two groups that were to lead the country to independence, the Zimbabwe African People`s Union (ZAPU) which succeeded the NDP following the outlawing of the latter organization in 1961, and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which was formed in 1963 following the split in the leadership of ZAPU in 1962, had been established. Both groups were banned in 1963, and they began a guerrilla campaign against the Rhodesian minority regime in 1966 - the Second Chimurenga. ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo, operated out of Zambia, and ZANU, initially led by Ndabaningi and later Robert Mugabe, also started its operations from Zambia but later established bases in Mozambique following the country’s independence in 1975 (Chung, 2006; Bhebe & Ranger,1995; Johnson and Martin, 1981).

The bitter 15-year guerrilla war between the nationalist guerrilla armies and the Rhodesia Front government army, led by Prime Minister Ian Smith, only ended in 1979, following the Lancaster House agreement that was concluded in London. The first democratic, non-racial elections were held in 1980. ZANU won these elections by a majority of seats available to blacks (57 out of 80), while its fellow liberation struggle movement, ZAPU, won 20 seats, and the remaining 3 seats were won by the United African National Congress (UANC), led by the moderate Bishop Abel Muzorewa. The Rhodesia Front won the remaining 20 seats of the 100-seat legislature reserved for a separate white election under the constitution of the Lancaster House Agreement. The ZANU leader, Robert Mugabe, became Prime Minister, while the late Reverend Canaan Banana, a former vice-president of the African National Congress, was appointed the ceremonial president. Banana later relinquished his post as president in 1987, when the country’s constitution was amended to introduce an executive presidency, to which President Mugabe was elected in December 1987 (Sithole, 1987; Mandaza, 1987; Moyo, 1992).

The early 1980s was a period of intense political conflict between ZAPU and ZANU. The conflict resulted in political instability in the Matebeleland and Midlands provinces of the country (1982-1987), and more than 20 000 civilians were killed by government forces battling to contain the activities of a few political rebels who had taken up arms. The violence and killings of this period only ended in 1987 after the signing of the Unity Accord between ZANU and ZAPU which merged the two parties into the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF). But, the atrocities of this period, called Gukurahundi (the rain that sweeps the chuff), has remained a bitter source of government resentment among the country’s Ndebele population, who also feel marginalized from both central government decision-making processes and the economy (Alexander, McGregor & Ranger, 2000; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2003).

Following the merger of ZANU and ZAPU in 1987, ZANU-PF had uncontested power until 1990, when its political hold was challenged by ZUM (Zimbabwe Unity Movement), a party founded in 1990 by ZANU-PF’s expelled Secretary General Edgar Tekere. ZUM successfully fought against ZANU-PF’s attempts to impose a one-party state government by becoming a viable opposition at the time.(Moyo, 1992; Sithole, 1997).

The various attempts at opposition that followed in the 1990s, such as the Ndabaningi Sithole-led ZANU Ndonga, the Democratic Party, the Forum Party and the Zimbabwe Union of Democrats, were largely unsuccessful in constructing national constituencies and in providing popular alternatives to ZANU-PF. Moreover, in the face of determined state repression and an electoral system that provided little space for them to score electoral victories, these parties were not able to develop viable structures or political support (Sithole, 1997; Makumbe and Compagnon, 2000; Raftopoulos, 2006).

ZANU-PF’s monopoly on national politics was only shaken in 1999 by the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a predominantly urban and labour-based movement led by the former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. The MDC won 57 seats out of the 120 elected seats in the 2000 parliamentary elections, the most any opposition party had ever garnered. The MDC, which has been accused by ZANU-PF and other critics of being a front for Zimbabwe’s white commercial farmers and an agent for Western imperialism, drew most of its support from the urban constituencies, where residents were bitter about the deteriorating economic and social conditions in the country. ZANU-PF won most of its votes from the rural areas, where it had a huge, loyal support base built during years of the liberation struggle and where residents were grateful about allocation of land during the Fast Track Land Reform project. With 62 seats and 51.7 percent of the votes cast, the ruling ZANU-PF was faced for the first time with a sizeable opposition. However, its narrow electoral majority was bolstered by the Presidential appointment of 20 MPs (EISA, 2000; Masunungure, 2004).

Having polled 1 416 467 votes against his closest rival, Morgan Tsvangirai’s 1 192 981 votes, the ZANU-PF leader, President Mugabe, was able to retain the Presidency in the 2002 Presidential election, which was highly contested and extremely violent (EISA, 2002). According to the Human Rights NGO Forum report of 2003, between 1 January and 14 April 2002, 54 deaths occurred from politically motivated violence. Other acts of violence reported included 945 cases of torture, 214 kidnappings, 229 cases of intimidation or threats, 143 cases of unlawful detention, 29 disappearances, 99 cases of unlawful arrests, five cases of rape, 48 school closures and about 1 000 confiscations of identity documents.

Through a mixture of both persuasive and coercive tactics, ZANU-PF managed to recover much ground in the March 2005 parliamentary elections, winning 78 seats against the MDC`s 41. One seat went to an independent, Jonathan Moyo, a former cabinet minister who was expelled from the party and government after challenging President Mugabe’s plans to appoint Joice Mujuru in her current post as deputy president (Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, 2005)

In October 2005, the MDC split into two factions, one led by the party’s founding president Morgan Tsvangirai and another led by the radical, former university student leader, Arthur Mutambara. The split, which followed years of infighting along regional, ethnic and class fault lines as well as disagreements over strategy, accountability and violence within the party, was precipitated by a disagreement over participation in the 2005 elections for the re-introduced Senate. The faction led by party President Morgan Tsvangirai advocated boycotting the elections while the other faction led by party Secretary General Welshman Ncube advocated participation (Raftopoulos, 2006; Magaisa, 2005)

Since the October 2005 split, the two MDC factions have spent a considerable amount of time fighting each other, and this has created confusion and demoralisation among both its internal and external supporters. In the elections immediately after the split, the MDC fared badly. The party only managed to win 7 of the 50 contested seats in the November 2005 Senatorial Elections (African Elections Database, November 2005). Between 2005 and 2007 opposition challenge to the ZANU-PF hegemony was weakened, and the main challenge to it’s political dominance came from internal divisions within the party and also pressure from the deteriorating economy in general. The divisions in ZANU-PF, emanating from the internal struggle for succession of both the party and the country’s presidency, have resulted in three rival camps all competing for the right to succeed President Mugabe as the leader of the party and the country. The three dominant factions are: (1) the ‘Mugabe faction’, whose political agenda is to extend Mugabe’s current term of office and make him a life president; (2) the ‘Mujuru faction’, led by former army commander General Solomon Mujuru which was opposed to Mugabe’s standing for another election in 2008 and wants one of the current vice-presidents and wife of General Mujuru, Joice Mujuru, to succeed him; and, finally, (3) the ‘Mnangagwa faction’, which is backing the former State Security Minister and current Minister of Rural Housing and Social Amenities, Emmerson Mnangagwa, for the presidency.

The divisions within the ZANU-PF could arguably have bolstered the MDC, and on 29 March 2008, the party managed to gain the majority of votes in Zimbabwe’s presidential and parliamentary elections. The three major candidates were ZANU-PF’s Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC-T faction, and Simba Makoni, an independent candidate and former Finance Minister. Following the elections, Mugabe refused to relinquish power on the basis that MDC-T had not gotten the requisite 51% percent to avoid a run-off election. Mugabe called for a run-off election in July 2008, however, Tsvangirai who claimed that he had won the election outright initially refused to contest the run-off election. The months between the first election and the run-off election were marred with violence amid allegations of torture and opposition intimidation. A few days prior to the event, Tsvangirai announced his withdrawal from the race, citing the increased violence against his supporters as cause for his decision. The election was held nonetheless, with Mugabe winning the run-off election due to the absence of opposition. However, resistance continued as the economy plunged further and as reports of violence, intimidation and extra-judicial detentions increased. By late 2008, problems in Zimbabwe had reached crisis proportions in the areas of living standards, public health (with a major cholera outbreak in December) amongst others. The production of diamonds at Marange became the subject of international attention as more than 80 people were killed by the military and the World Diamond Council called for a clampdown on smuggling. Mugabe was forced to the negotiating table to see an end to the crisis.

In September 2008, following months of mediated talks, a power-sharing agreement was reahed between Mugabe and Tsvangirai. In terms of the agreement Mugabe would remain president, while Tsvangirai would become the country’s prime minister. On 11 February 2009, Tsvangirai was sworn in and Thokozani Kupe (from MDC-T) and Arthur Mutambara (MDC-M) were sworn in as his deputies, marking the first stage towards implementation of the global political agreement. On 13 February, ministers from the MDC and ZANU-PF were sworn in. While progress has been made in establishing a government of national unity aimed at reviving the economy and the country’s political front, there are still some outstanding issues and Zimbabwe remains a work in progress.